What is your school losing?

Some information on the process

At the March 25th meeting the chair noted that they weren't sure how the money was being spent and that it wasn't being spent on teachers.

1.  If the money isn't being spent it could be saved for a larger purchase.  I am thinking about buying an event trailer to host robotics events and that is something that I could save for over a couple of years.  If I wanted a certain computer lab that was above the standard model I would have to pay for it, and I would also save over multiple years to make that big purchase.

2.  The money isn't typically spent on teachers.  We do get a bonus when the kids pass the tests.  But the vast majority of that money goes towards the students on a number of levels.  (I don't know if we could use the money to hire another teacher that wouldn't normally be an offered position.)

3.  If they are really concerned about the "other" category then I would suggest that they not allow the other category.  If your spending doesn't fit into a specified category, then find another way to pay for it.  :)

This is a video of the March 25th subcommittee meeting.

https://www.flhouse.gov/VideoPlayer.aspx?eventID=10205

Meeting Found on:  https://www.flhouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?CommitteeId=3282&sessionId=105

[00:47:37] Thank you representative for that question. And, and I do wanna thank, thank the committee we, I, because it's such a massive bill. I wanted to [00:47:45] get some language to you a week ago and, and we workshop that. So, but that's led to a lot of great feedback over the last week as well. I just wanna let you know that the conversation is still continuing and I'm open to any and all feedback and, and, and [00:48:00] data to continue that conversation.

[00:48:02] You might recall, um, during our our committee week process, we, we had a presentation regarding the add-on weight report that the, that department put together, um, with information from [00:48:15] all all school districts. Um, something that stood out in that report was that while the add-on weight generated continued to increase at a high amount of the last few years, [00:48:30] that the expenditure category labeled as other.

[00:48:34] Increase at even a greater rate over those, those same years. Um, when we looked at the amount of, of add-on weight that was generated, [00:48:45] that was going towards actual teacher compensation, you know, that was across the board pretty well under the 50% mark and in some cases was much lower than the other category.

[00:48:59] I'll use as [00:49:00] an example, the CAPE Program in 23 24, the usage category of teacher compensation across the board was 20% of the funds that were generated by the add-on weight. Whereas the other category [00:49:15] generated, the funds used for other expenditures was 36% of the funds that that were generated. And we saw that across the programs and looked at right sizing those amounts in the budget.

[00:49:29] [00:49:30] That doesn't mean that the programs themselves. Have to be impacted or will be impacted. And most of these programs, the districts are funding other, other funds toward them. But we were looking at the correlation of expenditures at this point, and that's what led to this [00:49:45] policy coming forward as just a straight 50% reduction across the board and to continue to have that conversation follow up.

Looking at individual schools

The following table gives the cuts to every school in the state and county. This is an undercount on a couple of levels. 

1.  It does not include bonus funding for IB and AP Teachers

2. It does not include bonuses for program completion.

3. It only shows what will be lost based on test completion off of the CAPE funding list for Digital Tools and Industry Certification.

4. A lot of tests didn't give the number of passed tests, so I had to guess based on the percentages.  I always guessed the lowest amount possible.  For example, for a 50% pass rate, it could have been 1 out of 2, or 2 out of 4, etc.  I just went with the smallest possible number.

Here is a link to the sheet and how I figured some stuff out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19rBiELhRNgimaaXH56jOYectOMboJK4O-eXr2OluzPA/edit?usp=sharing